Sermon for 1/11/2009
Moral Madness
Ephesians 4:17-19
Introduction:
HOWARD HENDRICKS: Popular seminary professor for many years. Many young men were taught by him over the years. Keeps a little black book with him wherever he goes.
He writes in there the names of men whom he taught in seminary classes who have fallen out of the ministry through affairs and sins. Grown to well over a hundred names
Was looking through the many names written down and was trying to determine any common thread between them. Finally he realized what each had in common. When he had them in his class and as he knew them in the years after they all had the same thing: A HAUGHTY SPIRIT (Pride and arrogance).
WBTU:
A. These verses are giving us a picture of a person who is lost, a person without Jesus Christ. Paul is telling the Christians in Ephesus not to live like the rest of the people who do not have Jesus Christ. Not to look down on other people but to give us a sober reminder of what was, or could be, or might be for us.
B. those outside of Christ are crazy. Our title is moral madness. Think about the story of the prodigal son. Tell story. Look at vs. 17 of Luke 15- When he came to his senses. This is when he went back to his father.
C. We can look back at our old lives before we came to Christ and at some of our old patterns and we can look back and say, "What was I doing." We were crazy.
D. However, Paul reminds the Christians not to go back to their old ways.
E. Reminding them of how things used to be. Some testimonies I have heard emphasize how bad they used to be in the past and they remember those things with fondness. Paul here is painting a picture of a lost person so that we are reminded of how the Lord got us out of the pig pen and how things really were before we came to our senses.
Thesis: Moral madness affects a person’s whole being in a negative way. Let’s look at some of the ways it affects a person.
For instances:
I. A Muddled Mind
Three phrases here talk about the mind:
1. Futility of their thinking (Ephesians 4:17).
a. Criminals come from all walks of life: rich, poor, black, white, educated, and uneducated. Background makes little difference. However the common link between them all is a thinking pattern. For many years people thought that the problem was the criminal’s environment. In the book, The Criminal Personality, a Bible to those in law enforcement who analyze criminal behavior, they said, "Perhaps most important is that [our studies have] demonstrated that a criminal is not a victim of circumstances. Changing the environment does not change the man". The book says that criminal behavior is the result of warped thinking processes. The thinking process of the criminal mind is out of whack. Romans 1:28 calls it "a reprobate mind." The problem is in the criminal’s mind, not his environment. However, couldn’t this be said of the entire human race?
b. PAUL SAYS THEIR THINKING IS EMPTY. The word FUTILITY lit means, ‘that which never succeeds’. In their lostness they are never going to come up with the right answer. It means vanity, emptiness, without any purpose to it. Our actions flow from our thoughts, so if our thought life is futile and pointless, then our actions will be likewise irrational.
c. The fiction book of William Golding, The Lord of the Flies, tells about several boys that are abandoned on an island. The beginning of the book is full of hope despite their circumstances. Ralph, one of the boys and the main character of the book, is elected leader. However, through time, we find the boys at the end of the book behaving like savages and even murdering two of the boys. Ralph is hunted down like an animal and they are about to kill him too. In a dramatic turn, a boat comes and rescues all of the boys. Ralph is saved. In the final scene, Ralph cries, in mourning for his friend Piggy, his own loss of innocence, and his newfound awareness of the darkness of human nature.
2. Darkened in their understanding (Ephesians 4:18) a. They are without the faculty of discernment. They are unable to clearly distinguish between right and wrong.
b. Romans 121For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. c. Remember when our mother or father came into our room early in the morning and turned on the light. It hurt our eyes. We got underneath the covers to shield our eyes from the light. This is what a lot of people do today. Jesus is the light of the world and when that light shines upon them, it hurts their pride, so they run and hide.
d. John 3:19- This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
3. Ignorance that is in them (Ephesians 4:18)
* Because of their warped minds, they are ignorant of the things of God. This is more like a willful ignorance than just plain ignorance. I am willfully ignorant of construction. I am not ignorant of fishing. Have resources for both.
II. A Separated Soul
Ephesians 4:18- Alienated or separated from the life of God
A. One time I had a separated shoulder and had to have surgery. It was quite painful and sore.
A. There are a few who are separated from God because they believe there is no God. I was reading some books given to my boys about the beginning of the world. Big bang theory. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Not many true atheists. Most believe that God or a Supreme Being had something to do with Creation.
B. Most people believe We are different from the animals. We can think and reason and ask why.
C. The more common reason that most have a separated soul is that most people are godless. In other words, God is not in their thoughts, feelings or activities. He is rarely on their minds. They live as if there is no God.
C. What happens after we die? Most cannot hold to the idea that the grave is the end. It seems that it would make sense to be concerned about God.
D. But everyone is going to heaven. Really! Heaven is filled with God and His glory. I don’t think these souls would be happy there.
E. To be separated from God sounds like hell to me. Ecclesiastes 12:7- Remember your Creator before the spirit (soul) returns to God who gave it.
E. One time a minister was talking with a man with not much education. The preacher was asking him about spiritual matters. The preacher asked, "Aren’t you concerned about your soul?" He replied, "No, I have no soul." The preacher replied, "I thought every one had a soul." The poor fellow explained himself, "I had a soul once but I lost it; and Jesus Christ came and found it, and now I let Him keep it, for it is His, it does not belong to me any longer."
II. A Hardened Heart.
Ephesians 4:18, 19- Hardening of their hearts, lost all sensitivity, past feeling
A. Literally – "a hardening of the skin so as not to be sensible to touch." The man who put out matches and cigarettes on his hands. No pain because had so many callouses.
b. They are calloused to feeling, have lost sensitivity to all moral principles and practices, and are morally unresponsive. No concern over their sins. No sense of shame. Nothing makes them blush
D. They are past the power of improvement. Where there is no feeling there
is no pain, and where there is no pain, there is no search for a cure.
F. Past the power of true enjoyment. There is no pleasure without feeling. Ecclesiastes 12:1- Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them"
III. A Lifeless Life
Given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for me. Ephesians 4:19
A. We see here a voluntary abandonment to sin. They are not forced by God or the devil. Everyone has weaknesses but they just give into them.
B. A great appetite for sin. Never satisfied! I can’t get no satisfaction.
C. I Timothy 4:2 – Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They abandon themselves to moral perversion.
D. 2 Peter 2:19- They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity- for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.
E. Illustration of sex trafficking, child and teenager sex slaves in Asia. Almost everyone says this is sick but these people are past feeling! Think of these people who are in slavery to this addiction, not really the sex slaves themselves but those who pay good money to do this!
Conclusion and invitation:
A. Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6
B. John 10:10- I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
C. How? Put off the old self, and put on the new self. How do we do that? Galatians 3:27- for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
